


She grew flowers

by laughingpineapple



Category: Myst Series
Genre: Gen, Prophetic Dreams, Regular Dreams, bit of both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 06:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4468472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her battles are fought against every drop of her blood. These are the gentlest. Her mother still loves her, she thinks, deep down. Deep down is all she has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She grew flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was "Yeesha, Dreams of a Desert Bird" @ smallfandomfest and even though I discovered the fest after the prompting period had ended, damn, I couldn't leave that one alone, could I? :)  
> Fic heavily depends on both Uru's Words and Yeesha's journal in End of Ages.

 

(Yeesha remembers her mother's smile as she tucked her into bed. “Sweet dreams”, Catherine used to tell her as blue night fell over Tomahna. She would leave a flower by her bed, and Yeesha would clench her fists around her blankets and stare at her with all the intensity of her betrayal. 'Sweet dreams', her mother said, but how could her dreams be any good it they weren't like hers, if they weren't special?)

 

 

 

tree

“I am not mother”, she tells herself as she bolts awake, eyes wide open in the darkness. “I am of her; I am not her”, she whispers, breaking free of her blanket, nails tracing the circles on her forehead that protect the sanctity of her name. She can feel the pigment under her fingertips: it is all still there. All still there. 'Yeesha'. Breath trickles out of her mouth and along with it the dream. Which was just that: a dream. Biological mechanics. Nostalgia waxing and pressing along the spires of the brain until it brimmed over and flooded the words she treasured all afternoon, her place in the prophecies (the words of others who, like mother, could see): _A desert bird knows when the storm will come._

Wet words that smelled of home.

It went like this: the roadrunner dashed through the desert, black clouds in her wake. There was no destination beyond the cracked ground. She – the bird, black crest, balanced tail feathers, small dark red-circled eyes burned by the heat, and she sees the rocks in front of her feet and she sees it from far above and all is burnt dry – ran to leave a mark, to exist. The trace is deep, she can see it. The landscape is changed, there is a wound now which sucks in the air and the black clouds with it. A line of murky rain falls down the earth.

It's nothing new. Yeesha still has black water in her ears as she puts dough in the oven and picks which herbs to mix for an infusion, but all the dream tells her is that she misses the desert, that there is one same earth on the surface and down the cracks, that she should do something more constructive with her time than aching over the one missing piece where all prophecies converge (it has to be Calam, anyway. Haven't they cracked this already?)

The dream tells her nothing new, and in this certainty she nests.

There was, in the corner of her eye, a glimpse of green. Tall trees far behind her feet. She never looked back.

 

 

 

root

“I am not-”

This is no dream. Her dreams lie out in the desert, drawing heat on flat stones. She dreams of time circling back to her beginning, rich in brass and green, of caressing her braid and whspering in her own ear – not 'no', but 'not yet'. 'Stay with them one more month, one year, ten'. 'Ground yourself to their frailty'. Her dreams are, disturbingly enough, light.

This maze of stone is no dream. She knows the winding paths and she knows that she has to walk them, again and again, alone, to tread their meaning. Figures in space. The City's stories are not all dust, there is a sense to be found in movement and she dares not hope it is a gentle one. Yeesha walks in the darkness. In her footprints, symbols bloom. A thicket of marks and shapes rearranges itself around her, and it's smells and sounds and the grating surfaces under her fingertips given form, barest patterns than even thoughts, rearranging themselves, glowing until they burn.

 

Yeesha rubs her eyes and they disappear, leaving deep sharp cliffs bare as they fall into the waters. Just her and the darkness now. And, past the buzzing and whirring of machinery, beyond the bridges and empty stones, the low barking call of a desert bird.

This is no dream.

“I would wake up, I would smell the flowers in the greenhouse, and I would know what to do.”

 

There is a numbness inside, she later tells Calam over their reviewed writings, and no words to fill it. Only stars. He cannot help. He puts a blanket around her shoulders and they plan to go see stars, real ones. The great sky-gazing Ages of old, standing with clear atmospheres in the middle of their galaxies, were lost to the Fall, so they'll improvise. She is good at pointing out new constellations.

 

 

 

seed

It takes years to come to her. So this is what it feels like.

It goes like this: she is carrying the seed of D'ni, the seed of all things that are D'ni, through a small cave, and she comes to a place where the paths stops, and this is a dream, but it is not her dream, not hers alone. And she knows that she stands in this frail middle ground because above she can see the sunlit sky of her youth, sparkling in the one shade of blue she has never been able to reproduce, and below she can see her reality of darks and stones and a pale orange-lit lakes twisting into spirals.

The voice that calls to her is not her own. For once, not a reflection. This is what it feels like.

And she knows what to do. And she is the Grower (in the wake of Calam's fears, in the wake of Kadish's delusions. Yet another chain, though not tied by blood. Everything converges, everything converges, her breath falls into a thousand lungs-).

It comes to her from her childhood: the small bird, feathers as mottled as the plateau under its feet, clicking its beak twice and turning its head up to gulp down some small prey. Its eyes were lucid.

She knows what to do.

 

That night, Yeesha sleeps. Terror coagulates around her, crushing her with the responsibility that comes with her resolve, but tonight she comes from _her_ , and remembers _her_ , and tonight she is loved.


End file.
